I have not got around to setting up samba yet. I will fire up the old windows box and test latter today.

Did you install the samba package ? when you try to create share what software is not installed ?

To get better help you should detail your steps and your cli commands used for the purpose (if any) and also any errors received. In debian, for secutiry issues with network setup, your user should be member of group "netdev". You may check which groups you are a member of with the following. In my case:
User/group uid/gid numbers may be different on your system.

I am finished to test already  I had no trouble creating a windows share on my Deepin 15.1 And it works good.

Thanks guys, and dances707 for the confirmation.

For the record, I'm talking about a fresh Deepin installation, where I have done nothing 'extra' - such as adding Samba-server bits manually.  Like I mentioned, when I do a fresh Deepin installation and try sharing a folder from Deepin, I am prompted that in order to proceed, I must install additional Samba software - which it then attempts to do, but fails almost immediately!

What I do not understand is why the rest of you don't experience this!  If as I suspect, you do encounter this problem, but then load the Samba software manually - rather than Deepin itself detecting the problem, trying to install the Samba software, but failing - then it is a bug of sorts with the Deepin setup and should be fixed.  After all, something so funbamental sould work 'out-of-the-box', and not require the user to go messing about installing stuff manually, or proving additional configuration.  The very same thing occured when I installed Deepin 2014, so I am either somehow making the same mistake now, or this bug (of sorts!) has been inherited by Deepin 15.

Same goes for Deepin 15 needing the network password everytime a remote-share is accesed.  I do not understand how others do not experience exactly the same problem - which is really annoying!  The 'bug' seems to be that despite Deepin (probably) having stored your network password from a previous attempt, it stupidly defaults to trying to access the shares 'Anonomously' every time, rather than opting for the 'Registered User' option, which the user would have selected previously, and already supplied a password!

Although the Distrowatch reviewer had a point about Samba being Windows-specific, in my experience, Samba is without a doubt the easiest way of sharing/accessing remote-shares - and that includes between Linux-only PC's, which is all I have!  The so-called 'native' NFS sharing is a joke in comparasion to Samba - it's one of the few pieces of software that I have come across that can completely freeze an otherwise healty Linux OS, necessitating a reboot.  So for me, Samba is King!

Actually I did not encounter your problem. I referred to the Debian Wiki first,  because its been my experience that in most distro's the samba server is not enabled by default.

Sorry, that was poorly worded - I realised that you were not experiencing the same problem!  I also know that most distros don't come with a fully-enabled Samba setup - Mint for example comes with just the client side of Samba installed, enabling the user to access remote shares, but not create shares (same as Deepin 15).

Where things diverge is that with Mint/Mate, when I right-click a folder I want to share on the network, and select 'Sharing options', I am informed that required Samba server-side software is not installed, and would I like to install it (just as happens with Deepin 15) - Mint then SUCCESSFULLY installs the software and adds the network share.  Deepin 15 fails to install the software, so cannot create the network-share.

At least, that is what I experience.

You have the ability to notice out of the box details that advanced users may not experience. Please help by posting command line outputs if any and screenshots of GUI errors.